NOT THE NORM
It is important that you get it right. Please understand, I have not said that we think 990 is unconstitutional, I said that we intend to enforce 990. You asked me if I felt 990 has helped speed up the clean up and I said no, it hasn’t because there has been resistance to 990 by the responsible parties who have even talked about the possibility of litigating. If we are not able to reach an agreement with them [Boeing] for the land pursuant to 990 standards, then there will be litigation.
I would imagine it would get started almost immediately because there is a statute of limitations that runs out at the end of this year. If they are going to file a claim concerning constitutionality of the measure. they have to do it in within two years of it going into effect January 1, 2008. That means they have got to certainly get it started before January 1, 2010, and might actually be tied to the date it was signed into law by the Governor, which is something like October 17, 2007, which would be October 17, 2009. There’s a 2 year window and we are fast approaching that limit so if there is going to be litigation; it would have to get started soon.
Boeing is not a company without means. They have some very good lawyers. Boeing does not want to litigate because it is a waste of time and money. Boeing is not one to litigate. What Boeing wants to do is clean this site up and they want to clean it up to 990 standards even though they are not happy about it and don’t think it is necessary. They want to clean it up to 990 standards but they want to make sure that in doing so that they are treated reasonably. There are various ways that one can interpret provisions of 990 and they want the law to be interpreted reasonably, not unreasonably. They do not want, we don’t want them to end up in a situation where they end up excavating a million or two million cubic yards of dirt because people in command of the situation decide that it has to be interpreted in some particularly stringent way. Do you have any idea what an excavation of a million cubic yards of dirt would entail? Let me tell you. First, it would take about 20 years. That’s twenty years of trucks flying up and down the roads every day. Second of all, it would be an ecological catastrophe because it would moonscape the mountain and I don’t think any of us wants to denude the mountain.
And who has the final say in the interpretation?
DTSC. That is my department. DTSC has the final say in the matter but this is a political project. So there are political forces at play. There are people with political influence who have some say in the matter, too. This is a highly politicized project and let’s just say that we work very hard here at DTSC that members of the public are kept informed about what we are doing. We do our best to meet on a regular basis with members of the public to answer their questions. There are some questions that we will never be able to answer. And there are some people who will never be satisfied with the fact that there are certain questions that can’t be answered. So they will never be happy no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, they will never be happy.
I’ve been working on this project since early 2007. In one respect, yes, this is the most difficult project I have ever tackled. Look, this is a difficult project technically. But that is not what makes this project the most challenging that I’ve ever tackled. What makes this project the most challenging that I’ve ever tackled is the emotional side of it. It’s the preconceived notions that people bring to every meeting, to every discussion that make this one of the most difficult projects that I’ve been involved with in the course of my career.
People think that their ailments are caused by exposure to the elements from the mountain. And they’re afraid. But the science doesn’t support that. The meltdown was fifty years ago. They want me to tell them their cancers are caused by Boeing. We can’t do that. No, I don’t think there will be an answer to that question. Not ever. The survey will not answer any of those questions. Absolutely not. Definitively not. All the survey will tell us if it is contaminated and, if so, to what extent. What are the constituents that are contaminating the surveyed property? Where are they, how wide, how deep, how far? Whether they are responsible for someone’s bladder cancer who lives two miles away or who worked at the property back in the 1950s or 60s, we can’t say that. I’m not saying we can’t say it because we don’t want to say it. There’s no way to prove that. There are so many other things that could cause the kinds of cancers that people unfortunately have. And we all know what those factors are. There are lifestyle issues, there’s smoking, there’s diet, there’s genetic predisposition, there are certainly environmental exposures that could be responsible. But who’s to say that the exposure that caused somebody’s cancer came from Santa Susana as opposed to some other location. Could be the gas station, or wherever you lived before you moved to West Hills, who knows? Just the fact that you live in an urban setting increases your risk of cancer above that which a person who lives in a rural setting because there are more pollutants in the air in an urban environment than there are in a rural setting.
